


the storm is coming soon (it rolls in from the sea)

by calerine



Series: Nowhere Boys character studies [5]
Category: Nowhere Boys (TV)
Genre: Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Genderfluid Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 01:46:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calerine/pseuds/calerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another Andy Lau character study, this one exploring Andy’s relationship with his grandmother and his mother tongue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the storm is coming soon (it rolls in from the sea)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foreignconstellations](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreignconstellations/gifts).



> Warning for gender dysphoria.
> 
> For Charlie, because of reasons. Originally posted [here](http://badgels.tumblr.com/post/70294376518/the-storm-is-coming-soon-it-rolls-in-from-the).

Your grandmother is trying to teach you how to speak in your mother tongue. She twists her tongue with ease and says  _just like that_  and every time you try to follow, to roll your tongue over the ancient intonations, they are nothing like hers. Make them come out crisp, she instructs.  _Like the air on a an autumn morning._  Then  _look at your sister, she is so much better at it than you._

And you resent that, so you spend all the time after school practising, but your vowels remain wrangled, mangled, like wild animals that won’t sit still in your mouth, that tug at your teeth and demand to be let out.

Your grandmother gives up after two months.  _Ah boy ah_ _,_  she says shaking her head,  _maybe you learn from listening._

Failure leaves a bitter-sweet twinge in your throat. The words don’t leave. You are nine.

*

Now you are almost eleven, with so many facts tumbling about in your head, ready for re-telling at a moment’s notice. Your grandmother calls you grandson in Mandarin. On her tongue, it sounds like a blessing but the inexplicable sinking of your heart feels nothing like.

You the oldest son of her oldest son, are born with so many expectations placed on your narrow shoulders. Get into a good school, get straight As, get into medical school, become a doctor but you can’t even get the angles of your Chinese name right on each attempt.

You help out in the restaurant every day after school and it feels like a penance. Sometimes you dare to wish you didn’t know this language at all; prefer complete ignorance to the insufficient sounds that emerge from your mouth. Perhaps you lost the right ones on those walks to your friends’ houses, maybe they fell out of your pockets while you shouted at video games in English and scribbled clumsy translations in the margins of your Chinese homework.

Over pig trotters in vinegar and fried garlic vegetables, your father speaks to your grandmother in Cantonese. Viv squeezes your hand under the table and jealousy wells up in your chest. At least she understands what they’re saying, all those jokes that you will never get and nuances you will never feel sitting perfect on the tips of your teeth, resting there like they belong.

But when you ask, your father tells you about your history, thousand years of emperors and generals accumulated into you, Andrew Lau of Bremin, too short in your arms and everywhere else. He tells you of your great-granduncle who fought in the Indonesian revolution after World War Two, who smuggled arms from Singapore to aid freedom fighters. Then your great grandfather who was addicted to opium and left his wives to fend for themselves while he spent nights in smoky drug dens, sleeping with other women until he hung himself.

You don’t stop asking; hoard all that your father is willing to offer even when he’s exhausted from frying prawn crackers and making small talk, keeping them like notes passed furtively during class. If you could record them in a notebook you would, but writing them in Roman letters feels like a betrayal. So you lay on your bed during late nights, sleepless from about wondering what fell through the cracks when your father said  _your great grandmother gave everything she had to raise her children, she had nothing_. You ponder; if the throbbing pain in her bound feet hurt her more than the rivalries within the household, how much was everything and how much was nothing at all.

(Sometimes it feels like you could read spend the rest of your life learning about every last bit of Chinese history from English books and still come up lacking.)

*

You are eleven. At least your cousins no longer giggle when you greet them in Mandarin.

One evening while you’re fetching cutlery for dinner, your grandmother says that you will be her grandson no matter what, no matter how much you can’t grasp at words that are hers. You say  _thanks, nainai_  with emotion swelling up in the bridge of your nose, and then  _thanks_  again when she leaves an extra piece of sweet and sour pork on your plate. It’s her way of showing that she loves you, even though you don’t understand why she gets angry when you cut your nails at night or why she burns so many notes for your grandfather during Hungry Ghost Month. (If Hell is a capitalist state, then why is it not built on a meritocracy?)

Sometimes you catch her looking at you with soft, quiet eyes, like she could never hope to understand you wholly, like your mysteries are completely yours to keep and she only wishes for you to let her in on a part of your whole. You think about secrets. You think about how many your  _nainai_  must have, more than you do probably - more than you could ever wish to have. Hers left unarticulated in four different dialects, and yours pieced together by all the facts that you keep.

Then you glimpse how far apart you are, standing shoulder to shoulder in the restaurant kitchen. If you are both made from stardust, you’d surely have been formed from separate galaxies, your explosions flinging you far apart and then all together at once.

*

You are very nearly twelve and language paints the world in shades of grey.

Now you know everything about binaries - about one and two, A and B, one or the other - two choices and neither fit you most days. When she looks at you like that, you can’t help your secrets that queue up on the tip of your tongue, so close you could tell her everything. On bad days, you are so thankful for when your grandmother talks about you in Mandarin. No one could possibly place a finger on who you are like that - boy or girl, animal or object, space pirate or pterodactyl.

Other days, you wish you had the words to tell her how much your body fits wrong, how language can’t fill the gaps of your misshapen bones. Maybe she’s weighed down with enough history for that; she’ll find a story about an ancestor who wore  _cheongsam_ s and  _changshan_ s*, who wrapped their chests with silk, sewed belly wraps and recited poetry with men and who walked like a lady, who never stopped asking questions.

Maybe if you told her, she’d tell you that story.

(Then maybe you’ll feel less alone.)

**Author's Note:**

> [cheongsam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheongsam) is the borrowed English word for the traditional Chinese dress for women.
> 
> [changshan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changshan) on the other hand is traditionally worn by men.


End file.
